The Vanished Kingdom: Travels Through the History of Prussia

by James Charles Roy

Book Overview

Twice in this century, Germany initiated wars of unimagined terror and destruction. In both cases, defense of the "Prussian" realm, the German homeland, was the perceived and vilified perpetrator. Few today understand with any precision what "Prussia" means, either geographically or nationalistically, but neither would they deny the psychic resonance of the single word. To most, it means unbridled aggression, the image of the goose-stepping Junker.But...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813337933
• ISBN13: 9780813337937
• Release Date: May 2000
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

"All the worst Nazi's came from Prussia"

That was what one coworker told me on the first day of my new job. Yea, awkward. (my ancestors left in the 1880s) Anyway, there is a lot more history to Prussia than Nazism and these days books about Prussia don't exactly pop out of the book shelves; those that do typically refer to places remote in time and place. However, the author has done a tremendous job of joining the past and how they touch and concern lands and locations today. Well researched and organized, it is a great introduction into a history your teacher might have forgotten to cover.

The Vanished Kingdom

I found this book to be quite enjoyable and easy to read. It was engrossing and I finished it in a few days. It was an area of history that has always interested me and the author did an excellent job of pulling it all together. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested in Prussian/German history.

Overall, just a great book

If you are interested in the Topic of Prussia, from it's early History, to it's Final, most Terrible finale; this is the book that you must read. It starts out from the very begining when the place we now call Prussia was just an empty barren landscape. The author takes us to the places where all the great cities and battles of the time took place, and tells us how Prussia looks at the time the book was written, about 3 years ago. He interviews the people who reside now as well. Sure, as some would say there is slander in his tone towards them but if you think of the overall picture maybe he s trying to tell us something about that. Form your own Opinion. What really puts this book over the top into the Five Star realm is the last 3 chapters when he talks about the Thrid Reich. Specially about the "Trek" that most Prussians had to take in order to get away from the Russians. The tales of the misery, death and suffering is told by interviews from people who went through it. The assasination of Hitler is talked about and a very interesting read as well. There is even a very large interview with a Holocaust survivor that shows the darker side of the Thrid Reich. Over all a great book and a must read if you want to know about Prussia. In fact it should be the only book you should get if you want to get a good, somewhat detailed overview of that old land where now no Germans reside. Simply a complete book with lots of interviews which in turn, as any reader would know, gets you straight to the point of the theme, without much imagination or thougth on your part.

Finally Someone Presents a Living History!

I just wanted to personally thank James Roy for writing such a totally compelling account of Prussian history, with the inclusion of personal stories of the human tragedies endured as Prussia ceased to exist after 1945. My mother and grandparents were among those expelled by Russia and Poland. Asside from their personal accounts of these events, this is one of the only English publications I've seen which discusses the human drama in the German east at the end of the war (asside from some occasional token mention in a History Channel documentary). Yes, parts of the history are portrayed as "romantic", esp. the Teutonic Knights, the landed aristocracy (Junkers), Frederick the Great et.al. , but so what ---- show me a history that doesn't describe the war mongering Napoleon in a similar light. The book is well tempered with the author's experience traveling through now Polish and Russian Prussia, describing the decay and ignorance of the local population with respect to relevance of historic sights (the use of the Hindenburg family cemetary as a garbage dump, with the former estate a collective farm is a case-in-point --> the locals claimed never to have heard of Hindenburg -----> the leveling of historic Koenigsberg and removal of 800 years of German history from East Prussia - including bulldozing cemetaries - is another). Both proud and disgracful history (witness Stutthof concentration camp) - its all here both inspiring and painful. And someone finally wrote it. Should be required reading in any Modern European history course - and would make a wonderful History Channel documentary.

East Prussian American Looks Back and Forward

My great grandmother came from near Danzig. Her name was Tarnowski, and obviously had Slavic origins. Her husband, a Proesch from Mecklenburg, was a descendant of the Slavic Abotrite tribes (ca. 800). They both considered themselves German. This book explained to me the ethic confusion of areas like Poland/Prussia. It also highlighted a fact that history has witnessed with Poland: You can wipe it off the map politically, but a Polish/Prussian sensibility will remain. What can this mean for the future? I believe Prussia is, indeed, not dead. Also, that WWIII is not neccesarily the inevitible result of such a conflict. Is the extinction of Prussia another Versailles-like offense to the German people, or can accommodation be made to deflate this "ethnic" horror? I welcome response.